Saltwater Graves
by cartoon moomba
Summary: "I can hear now/the beating hearts of lost friends." Yeul drowns until she is flying, held aloft in Etro's grasp.


**Disclaimer: **Final Fantasy XIII-2 does not belong to me.

**AN: **_can't stop won't stop _I should be playing Lightning Returns but here I am writing Yeul.

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><p><em>Saltwater Graves<em>

o

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><p>Yeul closes her eyes, and she is drowning.<p>

To her, the feeling is all too familiar - it does not change, this ocean she is submerged in, and she has had thousands of years to learn the rhythm of its waters, and an eternity left to be drowned in them. Her eyes flutter open as she falls deeper into the abyss, grey light glimmering far above the water.

Like clockwork, she hears the first whisper come.

It calls her name – the true name that she does not remember during her time spent alive, but the one that always greets her in this place of death: Etro's name for her, the one she had before she became Yeul. She thinks it for the best, for when she does remember her life with that name she feels grief, and heartbreak, and loneliness. She remembers glimpses of humanity's first steps and she is always glad to forget them.

Yeul continues to sink, and the voices at the bottom of the sea increase. They thrum with happiness at her coming. They call for her, laughing and crying, the beating of their hearts a comforting lullaby to her ears. For a fleeting moment, Yeul feels their happiness; imagines what it would be like to be coming home to them.

She blinks slowly under the weight of the water. She watches the hands of light appear and stretch towards her from above the surface – they grab her by her small waist, cradling gently, and begin to lift her up. Her head lolls back as she is made to rise – always – and she glimpses faces far below, their familiar smiles blurring as she gets farther and farther away. Eventually she breaks the surface of the water and the hands fly her towards the sky, her hair trailing down below her. She glimpses a crumbling city on the shore. A gate stands towering above it, and a castle.

Then her eyes are closed and she is no longer breathing – instead, she hears the steady thrumming of a single heart. Before she is no longer Yeul, she carves the memory of this heartbeat into her soul, into the ever increasing list of beating hearts at the bottom of the sea, out of her reach for all eternity.

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><p>.<p>

…_Valhalla.._.

.

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><p>The first face she sees is that of Caius. The first face Yeul always sees is Caius' – for before Caius, she is not Yeul. Yeul is no longer Yeul without her eternal guardian.<p>

And so she sees him, and the girl she is before she is Yeul is falling to the ground. "Caius," her lips manage to form before her head snaps back and she is made to see things; is made to remember Yeul. His arms are around her when she awakens and this time, she finds herself smiling – this Yeul realizes that she has missed him. "Hello," she greets, brushing one small hand over the contours of his face. Her childish voice (for she is five today, and this is not the youngest she has been when Caius comes for her) is filled with warmth, her tiny body burning up at his familiar embrace.

"Yeul," Caius greets her back, the hint of a smile at his lips, and the father of the girl who existed before Yeul is heard to collapse on the ground behind them, sobbing.

(not all of Yeul's parents are happy to let her go. Yeul remembers, sometimes, a woman who shielded her in the face of Caius' sword, refusal trembling at her lips – and then her body falling to the earth and blood seeping out – and a scream at Yeul's own lips before she sees the face of her mother's murderer. Everything flashes gold, and she _remembers_, and the Yeul of that lifetime hated Caius. Caius has not drawn his sword on her parents ever since – at least, not when she has been around to see it.)

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><p>.<p>

…_is calling me towards the end…_

.

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><p>The day comes when Yeul sees a boy with blue eyes crying above her, the sky and land desolate behind him. When she is brought back to the present, it is Caius again and she knows that the time of this particular Yeul is up. They rest in a meadow of flowers, Cocoon suspended high above them, and Yeul brings a trembling hand to rest on her companion's chest. Below her flimsy skin and bones, she feels the erratic beating of chaos, and says smilingly, her voice wavering:<p>

"Your heart… it is never there, beneath the sea. I am glad…"

For Yeul, dying is not death – it is slumber.

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><p>.<p>

…_I can hear now…_

.

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><p>She is once again submerged in murky waters. As she falls deeper she hears heartbeats and voices of all that have perished within her lifetimes, and has given up on counting them long ago. She is allowed a moment of false peace, in this place of rest she is not allowed to join – and then the hands of Etro, grasping her gently by her waist, a cage of light pulling her back towards her fate. Yeul closes her eyes as she flies – a beach, a city, a gate, a castle – and eventually, hears a heartbeat that she has not heard before.<p>

She mentally adds it to the list.

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><p>.<p>

…_the beating hearts of lost friends..._


End file.
